WEST WARWICK, R.I. — The slow road to build a permanent memorial at the site of a nightclub fire that killed 100 people 12 years ago is getting shorter, as organizers said they are inching closer to raising the $2 million they need to complete it.

The Station Fire Memorial Foundation has now raised $1.3 million after recently receiving several large donations, and the end is in sight for the yearslong effort, organizers said this month.

The 2003 fire in West Warwick was started when the rock band Great White set off pyrotechnics inside The Station nightclub, which had flammable foam lining its walls and ceiling as soundproofing. More than 200 people were injured.

A temporary memorial cropped up on the site shortly after the fire. The memorial foundation secured ownership of the land in 2012 and began to actively raise funds, but that effort got a slow start.

The pace has picked up recently after multiple donations of $50,000 to $150,000, fundraiser Daniel Barry said. Around $500,000 of the total is in-kind donations of goods and services from trade unions, construction companies and other groups, he said.

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mr618

Humanity doesn’t learn from these tragedies. Since 2003, 9 nightclub fires killed 799 people around the world (592 of those were in just three fires). Before that, between 1940 and 2003, we had 7 major nightclub fires in the US, that killed 992 (excluding the Station). And time after time, investigations reveal the same factors leading to loss of life: locked/blocked/obstructed fire exits; insufficient number of exits; flammable interior finishes; lack of staff training; lack of sprinkler systems; and patrons attempting to leave the same way they came in, even if there are sufficient exits.
When you go out to eat (or party), these are the things to look for: sprinkler heads on the ceiling* (if they’re not there, maybe you shouldn’t be there either?); fire exits (ideally, grab a table right next to an exit, making sure it isn’t padlocked or anything stupid like that; or map a route to 2 or 3 in your mind, and remember you’ll be crawling, blinded by smoke, choking on products of combustion, and dealing with panicked patrons; fire extinguishers (if you can sneak a look at an extinguisher, make sure it has been checked in the last month; look on the inspection tag); large windows you can break out to exit through (if the place is on fire, I’m not too concerned about breaking somebody else’s window!).
* There has NEVER been a multiple-fatality fire in a fully-sprinklered building, where the system was fully operational and the fire was within the design parameters of the system (for example, the sprinkler systems in the World Center were useless because the impact of the planes severed many of the risers, and the fuel load vastly exceeded anything the sprinkler system engineers envisioned happening)